The Southern Environmental Law Center hasn't decided what to do next about its twice-denied petition on the Jordan Lake watershed, SELC attorney Kay Bond said today.
During Monday's meeting of the Durham County commissioners, County Attorney Lowell Siler said he expected a lawsuit to come over the City/County Planning Department's ruling that the petition is invalid.
"We have not given any indication to Mr. Siler that we would do that," Bond said.
The possibility of litigation came up Monday when commissioner Becky Heron asked for a report on the petition's status. After Siler said it would be better discussed in closed session due to the possibility of lawsuits.
"The only way to go now is an appeal to superior court," he said.
The petition, which was not on the commissioners' Monday agenda, was referred to a closed session after the regular meeting. The closed session was also called to discuss a lawsuit against the county by Southern Durham Development, which also involves the lake's watershed.
The SELC and Haw River Assembly filed a protest petition on behalf of 24 property owners affected by the county's request to rezone and change the land-use designations of more than 230 acres around the reservoir and tributaries in southwestern Durham County.
If valid, the petition would require at least four commissioners' votes to approve the changes, instead of the normal three out of five. After Planning Director Steve Medlin ruled the petition invalid, the changes passed 3-2 on Oct. 12.
Medlin said the petition signers did not represent the necessary 20 percent of affected land area. After the vote, the SELC reviewed ownership records and claimed the planning department had been mistaken and that the changes failed to win approval.
Last week, Medlin advised commissioners that the petition was still invalid due to problems with some signatures. No further details have been released.
"That's all we know," Bond said. Not knowing the basis for Medlin's second ruling is one reason the SELC has not decided on future action, she said.
Comments
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Mon, 01/04/2010 - 04:48 — snj19The accountant said : "Could you please come for your earnings later, because I have no change here?"
Durham's democratic integrity is on the line ...
Wed, 11/11/2009 - 23:03 — mmr121570So...let me get this straight:
1) The planning department (PD) couldn't tell Durham citizens how to define a 'side' (as required for a protest petition) one week before the originally scheduled public hearing in September, nor when they called after the public hearing was continued until October.
2) Then citizens were only given information on how the planning department calculated the percentages of signatures obtained (on each of these sides), AFTER the PD invalidated the petition (based on these calculations) , thereby prohibiting citizens from evaluating the planning department's decision until AFTER the public hearing on Oct 12 (when the BOCC voted 3-4 to rezone the watershed boundary -- a vote that wouldn't have sufficed had the protest petition been deemed valid).
3) Now the planning department and county attorney, who took less than 2 days to determine the petition invalid the week before the Oct Public hearing, takes over two weeks (from the time the SELC communicated to them the errors in their calculations) to decide they are sticking with their invalid decision....and even then, they won't provide any specific reasons for this decision. County Attorney Siler refuses to reveal the specific problem(s), not to mention the specific signatures in question, to the public. [Yet as of County Attorney Lowell Siler's press release supporting the invalid decision, none of the larger property owners who signed the petition had been contacted in attempt to validate/verify their signatures.]
I personally offered to help acquire any information that the planning department needed to validate the signatures (I live right down the road from the majority of the signers). And the HRA and SELC have asked what is needed for verification and offered their services in this regard. Not a single person has contacted either of us indicating what is required for signature validation, much less how we can help.
Apparently, according to Siler, they are *still* determining the validity of the signatures -- if this is the case, then how can they have already announced their decision on the protest petition? I guess this scenario is far from new in this case-- Brenda Howerton did preclude her vote to rezone the watershed boundary by insisting that she still had 'questions' and 'reservations.' Glad these people aren't deciding whether to send our country to war!
All Durham citizens deserve to know Durham's DETAILED and SPECIFIC reasons for determining and maintaining the protest petition invalid, particularly when the SELC has presented good data showing erroneous calculations by the planning department toward this end.
As an exemplary Durham citizen and friend of mine said recently: "Because I Said So," is not a reason.